Vanquished Alarm
by Wicked R
Summary: While Cole is still busy getting himself killed after his failed attempt in Sam I am, the effects of one of Prue's mistakes come back to haunt the Charmed ones.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Vanquished Alarm  
Author: Wicked R  
Disclaimers: this is an altered Kernverse.

Genre: Romance.  
Rating: G.

Summary/Set: While Cole is still busy getting himself killed after his failed attempt in "Sam I am," the effects of one of Prue's mistakes come back to haunt the Charmed ones.  
Pairing: the point here is finding out!

Phoebe locked the door of the manor behind herself, "I'm home!" She shouted. The sisters always let each other know of their whereabouts to shield themselves against unwanted Piper blow ups and so they knew where everybody was in case of a demon attack.

"In the kitchen!" She heard Piper's voice and followed it, planning on finding something to eat anyway.

"How was your day?" Her older sister asked.

"Ohh, okay," she answered, "just busy as usual."

"You sure?" Piper asked, "you seem a bit jittery," she laughed, watching Phoebe's assail on the cookie box.

"I just forgot I was meant to have lunch. You know how I am when I'm engulfed in writing."

"But I cooked dinner."

"I'll get round to it Piper, I just need a quick chocolate energy fix...and sorry for coming home late. But I guess you guys didn't need me. Paige would've orbed after me if there was a chance of Rottano attacking."

"Oh, Rottano attacked all right and we vanquished him all right as well."

"How? I thought you needed the power of three for that."

"Yeah, and we had it, end of story."

"Piper," Phoebe said grouchily, and put one hand on her hip, "you are being enigmatic for the sake of going on my nerves for fun."

"Well, yeah, at least that much after not even a turn up from you for the vanquish of the month! Okay, week, vanquish of the week."

"With Paige a full time witch, one of us does have to work, you know. Where is she by the way and will you tell me at last what happened today?"

"Paige is actually...out, trying to bond with Prue."

"What?"

"Yes, missy, that is what you've missed. But don't worry, Prue will be around a lot more often nowadays that she was allowed to contact us. She came the exact moment we became desperate for you, Prue orbed in and gathered the two of us around the book, just like before. The power of three seems to work with either three of the four sisters, dead or alive."

"Orbed?" Phoebe caught on one of the most important words of the conversation.

"Well, it's good to know they won't let the talent of a good witch go to waste up there...you know, for every eventuality. She's been a whitelighter for a year now, but they thought we were not ready to take her back as that and not think of her as our out and out sister. Main thing she is here," she smiled at her happily. With a sudden enthusiasm, she rushed over to the other side of the table to hug Phoebe, "we are all here, isn't it wonderful?...I wonder how long it's going to take until the our world comes stumbling down again once more..."

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The penthouse was a total mess. Past that, it was an obstacle course. There were scribbled on and torn up pieces of paper, magic books, half burnt towels, empty turned over cans, rolling along nicely when the wind blew in until they bumped into the instant food leftovers and the smashed glass that was also on the floor, along with various dried plants and some animal remnants, lying in their pools of blood. A pong of alcohol was noticeable even with the balcony door open and the smell of dead flesh.

Cole surveyed the inside view curtly and pondered for a second whether he should wave his hand and made order with it. But as he felt like a complete mess of a person, the scene seemed to have matched his mood, so he didn't bother. He didn't bother with the lights either, with his demonic powers he could see well enough in the dark. Besides, making it look orderly would have created an illusion, the place would have seemed like as if Phoebe stayed there with him. All those powers and he had nothing. Furthermore, there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. The one person who ever really cared about him was now his worst enemy. He was disappointed in her, yet unable to let go. He felt broken, but nothing that he had tried so far compromised any of his physical integrity, no matter how much he would've wanted the opposite. Apathetic about anything else than finding the right potion to kill himself with, using both black and white magic at the same time, he figured if he was half human and half demonic, both sides of magic should be used to vanquish himself. But because that didn't exactly go well, he now tried to make potions that got rid of some of his powers, to try to make himself more vulnerable first. He even made a potion that was supposed to stop him from loving her, and one that was meant to heal heartbreak. Nevertheless, the results were the same. Nothing had an effect on him anymore, he was untouchable. Phoebe was his one and only motivation to live, his intention to remain good, or even pretend he did, justified by a faint hope that she will change her mind one day so far. But the more he believed he lost her forever, the less interesting evil side got. He had no business with demons, he had no business with anyone. It was as if she had sucked life out of him, without actually doing so. Everything has lost its purpose and the only thing that made some sense now was to finish his latest attempt at a concoction that was meant to purify evil, and thus he hoped to loose his powers. He tottered round a heap of muddy clothes and to the kitchen taking a glass of powdered Arabic gum out the refrigerator, then shimmered to Norfolk for some special pine needles and back to the glass table in his living room, where he poured the so far missing ingredients into a small pot. He brushed the side of the pot with his fingers to make it heat up and boil over, then knocked the fluid down without any concern about the heat or the small explosion beforehand. He followed it up with the anti-healing mixture he made earlier, then with several small strange coloured vials he lined up previously on the table. He noticed how quite a lot of one of the ingredients he used was left, shrugged, then picked the remains up and swallowed the hemlock down as well.

The room spun once, twice, then settled, and everything was back to normal, "there is undoubtedly no point in me continuing this," he finally straightened with a thought in mind. He will have to trick the Charmed Ones into using some spell from the Grimoire on him, make them think it's a white hex. And for that, he didn't need to shimmer far, cause he acquired long ago and kept the Grimoire at his office...

tbc


	2. Likelihoood

Chapter 2: Likelihood

Phoebe glanced at the handset when it started ringing, then willed herself not to hear it so that she can finish putting the paragraph in her head down onto computer before she forgot it. If there would've been a demonic emergency, her sisters would have called her on her cell as they always did.

The phone rang for what seemed an eternity before her secretary put her head in the door, "I think you really want to get that."

Phoebe reached out with one hand to press some buttons on her phone and turn it onto air mode before returning to hitting her laptop's keyboard, "hello?"

"Mrs. Turner?" A female voice enquired.

"Eee...I prefer the name Phoebe Halliwell," she said offhandedly, still concentrating on typing.

"But you are Mrs. Phoebe Halliwell Turner, correct?" The voice insisted.

"Technically, yes. Why?"

"My name is Martha Titchfield, and I am a nurse at San Francisco Memorial. Your husband has been brought in an hour ago after having had collapsed at his office. So far..."

"I doubt that," Phoebe stopped typing, having had lost the thread.

"What?"

"Uh, I mean, how can that be? Are you sure it's him?"

"I'm afraid it was his co-workers who called an ambulance. He was brought in unconscious with tremors, tahycardic, vomiting, hardly breathing. From the contents of his stomach and the substances found in his bloodstream we believe he has been poisoned somehow, but we are not certain with what. The only certain thing we can say that there were traces of hemlock. Poison hemlock, an exotic species introduced to the US..."

"I know what hemlock is..." She bit her tongue. Of course she knew the plant as a witch, but that might put her in a bad light if authorities start to question who allegedly poisoned the celebrated lawyer from McCarter, Kelvin and Kline, if any of this was true at all. Cole was invincible, what crazy plan was this now?

However, the nurse took her interruption as a sign of impatience to find out more about her husbands condition, "don't worry, his condition is not critical just now. Hemlock contains several piperidine alkaloid toxins that are potentially lethal with large ingestions, but the fragments we pumped out were hardly digested, so we assume there isn't much toxin in his body. We have decontaminated the gastro-intestinal tract and are administering fluids, keeping his potassium level at optimum. I'll be glad to explain everything to you when you got here..."

"Oh, of course," Phoebe got to her senses, "see you soon," she put down the phone, thinking about how is she going to explain to Elise that once again, she had business to attend to. Then it clicked with her. Everybody, even Elise would expect from her at this point in time to rush to her husband's side, towards the end of her divorce or not. Surely, she would do that. If she was going to find out what curious game was Cole playing at, she had to become one of the players.

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"Is Prue one of those people who never turn up in time?" Paige orbed back to the manor.

"She can be," Piper looked up from the pregnancy magazine she was reading, "why?"

"We were supposed to meet at four," she looked at her watch and frowned slightly, "it's half four."

"It will be whitelighter business, Paige."

"No, unfortunately not," Leo arrived, "she was forbidden to get in touch with you guys for a while now again."

Piper stared angrily for a few seconds before exploding, "how can they toy with us like that? Not to mention Prue."

"They had good reason."

"How dare you defend them when all they do is deprive us of our chance at happiness? If it wasn't for us witches I bet they would all be dead!" Piper was shouting, angry tears forming in her eyes over loosing her sister, even if in another way once again, but also in general against the elders who made her remember how they used to deny her and Leo any contact as well, "they must be basking in our sorrow," she said bitterly, her voice breaking.

Leo grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him, "you know that's not true. Let me explain. It isn't just that she is not allowed to see you, but she is also been barred from coming down to earth for a while. Unfortunately she made a big mistake. She used the Book Of Shadows for personal gain."

"So what? We do that all the time," Paige intercepted.

"Yes, but this one backfired. She conjured a wish demon to change one thing in the past. She wanted to tell Andy that she loved him before he died and the wish demon granted her that. What she didn't know was that a dead witch conjuring a wish demon has side effects. Namely, no matter she says the reversal spell or not, the demon remains in this realm. And to make matters worse, this one is out for witches, hoping they will make other mistakes. One of them already wished she had never been a witch, so he is winning. You really have to be careful what you wish for, especially if you speak out loud before we can vanquish this demon...Paige, you should go warn Phoebe..."

tbc


	3. Inclination

Chapter 3: Inclination

"He must have ingested even less than we thought, and the other substances we haven't been able to identify didn't cause any problems so far," nurse Titchfield supposed, "he's not comatose," she assured Phoebe, nodding in his bed's direction, "you could wake him up if you needed to, but it's for the best for him to catch a bit of sleep," the nurse whispered with a half smile that was a partly encouraging, and a bit routine.

"Thank you," Phoebe told the nurse as she was left alone with her husband. She scrutinised him bewildered, his colourless features, the drip in the back of his hand, the monitors showing details of his condition. She looked around, making sure the nurse doesn't see her and started looking for her own answers, shaking his shoulder forcefully, "Cole!" If it was another demon that did this, she needed to know, if it was some sort of game, also.

Cole blinked a couple of times, then tried to get up startled when he saw where he was. He only got a few inches up his pillow before he grunted and fell back onto the bed.

"What are you doing? What is going on?" Phoebe gave him a penetrating look.

Cole appeared to be surprised by everything, including her probing and presence. He answered prudently, moving now as little as it was possible, "I don't know...how I got here."

"What is the last thing you remember?" Phoebe sighed, and because Cole looked away, she added a few seconds later, "what did you do?"

"I guess the potions worked to some extent after all. Great. There's some chance then, I just have to work on them a bit more."

"What potions?"

"The ones I tried to kill myself with."

"You are still trying to kill yourself? Don't be absurd."

"Oh, you came to give me a sermon again, is that it?" Tears filled his eyes, "I really lost it, all right? I've tried to move on. But I can't..."

Phoebe groaned as she looked into Cole's bloodshot, green eyes. She couldn't help not feeling sorry for him, "I wish I had the chance to vanquish you before I really fell head over heals in love with you..."

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Phoebe found herself standing on a corridor, one that she would've recognised any time. She was right in front of a door with the number 7 on it, Cole's old apartment, the one he had when he worked as an assistant district attorney. She looked at herself, she was wearing a brown jacket, with a brown dress under it that tightly covered her filled form. Definitely the past it was, she established after sensing her long hair up in a bun. She had no idea how she got there, but had a hunch her wish had something to do with it since in her hand there was a potion vial with another item that she could never confuse with something else, Belthazor vanquishing potion. She was given a chance, by whom, it didn't really matter right now. If Cole wasn't, Prue would probably be alive and assuming she herself remained as she was, cause she came to the past with the knowledge of the future, they could contact Paige as well, even earlier than it has happened. They would constantly have four people to cover for the three necessary Charmed Ones. She got herself together, put the vial into her purse and knocked.

Cole opened his door in a few seconds time with a blue shirt that was unbuttoned, seeming happy to see her, "hi."

"Hi. I half expected not to find you here," Phoebe said, not relying on what she knew about her time travel just yet.

"Yeah? Well, an associate of mine didn't do what he was told so I've still got work to do here."

That gave Phoebe the clue. He was referring to not being able to kill them yet after just having tried to infect Prue with powers that were too much for her. Yeah, at this moment in time he really deserved getting vanquished, but he was already slowing down with his attempts, having been in love with her, "is that a good thing or a bad thing?" She blurted out.

"Both," Cole touched her to draw her inside and embraced her.

Phoebe let herself taken partly playing along, partly feeling relieved that she could give in to her desire to hold him without consequences this time. She knew, this was the second time they made love to each other, but that won't happen, that would make her totally fall in love with him. This time, she would vanquish him. But till then at least she could enjoy that one last hug. In her own timeline, if she would let Cole closer one inch, he would take it as an encouragement and she was having difficulties getting rid of him as it was. Feeling his warm body, listening to his heart, it felt so right. It gave her the sense of hominess.

He leaned down to kiss her fervently as she kissed him back with fire burning on her lips. She didn't even notice her body being lifted into his arms and taken to the bed until he was on top of her, never breaking the kiss. She didn't resist either as his hands went down along her side and pulled her dress up. Not completely conscious of it, but she had decided she would allow this night one more time. This was her Cole, not the one who went crazy over her two years later. She would have enough time to vanquish him later. Her hands slipped under his belt and undid his trousers. Somewhere in the back of her mind she also remembered that they should use condoms. She didn't want another womb raider, a replay at having to vanquish the baby's father. But every logical thought vanished as he began to move rhythmically. There was no stopping this situation from escalating into a centrifuge of passion...

tbc


	4. Linger

Chapter 4: Linger

Phoebe couldn't fall asleep after their lovemaking, not that she wanted to. She had a mission to accomplish. She had to wait till Cole went into a deeper sleep. Unmoving, he seemed so exposed and defenceless, just like the way she saw him lying on that hospital bed a couple of hours back. In addition, he was so handsome that her heart was beating faster every time she looked at him. She felt like she could have continued the same activity of staring at him there for the rest of the night, on the other hand, as tempting as it was, it clearly wasn't sensible. She would never get anywhere like this. She slowly moved away, trying hard not to wake the sleeping form and took the potion out of her bag. She stood with it over him for what seemed like an eternity, lifting the potion up several times, then stealing a few more minutes to just watch his chest go up and down. She imagined, Cole must've tried the same with her, trying to kill her the last time she had slept here, but never being able to finish the job. It took about half an hour of tottering for her to realise that she was never going to be able to throw the potion either. Cole was the Source when she helped her sisters kill him, that was different and the next time they had the chance, she stopped the show running when she realised he wanted to kill himself. It was guidance he needed, and her love. He was no threat, the same way as he was no danger to her back then when he had so many chances and so many reasons to kill them. No, this trip was a mistake, other than making her see her recent behaviour towards Cole was a bloomer too. So she wished herself back in her own time...

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"You're safe and sound!" Piper grinned and hugged her, putting down the plate of pork rolls she held in her hand, "oh, these are to keep the wish demon entertained till you were away," she pointed behind her, when a completely normal looking person sat in the middle of a crystal circle, munching at some of those rolls, "we couldn't vanquish him till you wished yourself back."

"But now we can," Paige tilted her head and threw some vial with an energetic movement, not even giving time for the demon to panic. He was gone in a millisecond, "there are so easy to vanquish though."

"What is going on?" Piper and Phoebe asked each other at the same time.

"Leo told us you landed two years ago," Piper continued.

"I didn't change anything," Phoebe shrugged, "I'll tell you later. Where's Cole?"

"Still in hospital, but his condition has improved, or so I was told. Paige orbed over to his apartment to get an idea about what had happened cause we didn't understand anything. We thought it was something you did in the past, making him loose his powers or something."

"No, no. Look, I'll really explain everything later. Paige, could you orb me over to Cole?"

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Cole lay motionless on the bed, sleeping in a similar position she left him lying only ten minutes ago, at his old flat. The main difference was in his sickly features. She sat down by the bed and took his hand in hers, managing to wake him up this time without wanting to.

"Phoebe?" He asked hoarsely and dazed.

"I'm here. How are you feeling?" She smiled at him.

"Why do you care?"

She felt awkward under his scrutiny and looked away. What could she say? That their recent lovemaking made her craving him that much that she was willing to reconsider her own actions? Or that she was having erotic dreams about him? "I don't like to see you in pain," she replied at last, "I forgive you."

A weak hoot escaped his mouth, "you ham it up. Why would you do that all of a sudden?"

"In the last couple of hours, I had a trip in the past, still don't know how, but my sisters are going to explain it later. Point is I was in a time we were at our best. I went back to kill you, but I couldn't because I still love you. I can't waste our life worrying about the a possible grim future."

"Are you serious?" Cole asked with a much lower voice than he questioned her previously. He sat up abruptly to look closely into her eyes in the dim light, "you are serious," he lay down back down, "I must be sicker than I thought."

Phoebe smiled, "no, I was told you can get out of here tomorrow."

"Tell me it's not a dream."

"I promise."

"Anything else I should know of?"

"No. Oh, yes, Paige had to clean your apartment a bit..."

The End.


End file.
